One week before his death, Jeremy Wilder broke a bone in his right hand while roughhousing and got a cast. COURTESY OF REBECCA WILDER

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After Jeremy Wilder, 16, was killed, a neighbor grew this pumpkin, which won the blue ribbon at the 2013 OC Fair. Jeremy used to win awards at the fair for his sunflowers. FILE PHOTO: NICOLE SHINE, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

Rebecca Wilder says she misses her son, Jeremy. He was killed in a confrontation a year ago; Jose Gil, the man accused of the slaying, told police he attacked Jeremy in self-defense. He hasn't been tried in connection with the death. ROSE PALMISANO, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

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Rebecca Wilder prays for her son every night before going to sleep. "We will never stop thinking about him," she said. ROSE PALMISANO, ORANGE COUNTY REGISTER

She wishes she could’ve stopped the stabbing that killed her 16-year-old son, Jeremy Wilder, a year ago. She wishes she’d been at his side at UCI Medical Center the night he died. She wishes the Orange County district attorney had locked up the man she believes is his killer.

Instead, the man she believes murdered her son Sept. 7, 2012 – a man who says the slaying was an act of self-defense – lives less than a mile from Wilder’s Garden Grove home.

“My son is dead and his killer is walking the streets,” Wilder says. “Is that justice?”

The question haunts her every day since she works in the county courts. In many ways, Rebecca Wilder searches for justice.

She created a Facebook site: Justice for Jeremy Wilder. She’s pushing for a “Jeremy’s Law,” which would require hospitals to notify parents when minors are brought in for emergency treatment. She wears a necklace made of beads that spell out his name – a symbol that she and everyone can see.

Question is, will she find what she’s looking for?

• • •

Jeremy Wilder’s last day started like any other.

The high school junior went to class at Marie L. Hare Continuation High School in Garden Grove. Later, he headed to a barbecue at a friend’s house. The friend, Clara Axford, was having six girlfriends sleep over – a teenage boy’s idea of heaven.

At roughly 10:45 p.m. Friday, Sept. 7, 2012, a neighbor offered Jeremy a ride home, less than a mile away. But before he got home, his cellphone rang. Axford had left her cell in Jeremy’s pocket, and she wondered if he could bring it to her. So Jeremy caught a ride back with two friends.

What happened next isn’t totally clear. It remains an open investigation by police, and a source of relentless pain for Rebecca Wilder.

What is known, for sure, is this:

Jeremy Wilder was with two teenage boys who previously had quarreled with Jose Gil, then 31, a man who lived in the neighborhood. After they returned the phone, Wilder and his friends encountered Gil, who was sitting on a leopard-print bicycle in the driveway of the home he shares with his mother.

At some point, according to a report from the district attorney, Gil was knocked off his bicycle. He then grabbed a butcher knife from a basket on the front of his bike and stabbed Jeremy in the chest and back.

Garden Grove police later discovered a BB gun in the car used by the teens Jeremy was with, but it’s unclear if that gun was ever brandished.

The teens next threwa bleeding Jeremy in the front seat of their vehicle and sped back to Minson’s home, failing to call either 911 or Jeremy’s parents.

What happened next was caught on the security camera at the Minson home.

Clara and the other girls screamed, “Jeremy’s been stabbed! Jeremy’s been stabbed!”

It’s also unclear why the ambulance didn’t arrive at UCI Medical Center, five miles away, until 12:14 a.m.

What is clear is that Jeremy was barely breathing when the ambulance arrived. And on the way to the hospital, his torn heart stopped.

• • •

At Jeremy’s house, Rebecca was growing frantic.

Where was her son? Why wasn’t he home? She called and texted him. No answer. She called his friends. No answer.

Sometime after midnight, Rebecca went outside and sat on her doorstep, waiting for her son to come home.

About the same time, doctors struggled to save Jeremy. He was rushed into surgery with a punctured heart and lung. Afterward, he was transferred to intensive care, but his injuries were too severe. His heart stopped again. Jeremy died at 4:45 a.m.

Hours had passed, but no one at the hospital called Jeremy’s family.

When asked about this recently, UCI Medical Center spokesman John Murray said the hospital’s policy is to contact the family of children and teens when possible. But when it’s a matter of life or death, the law doesn’t require it, he said.

He liked to roughhouse and wrestle, but not on a wrestling team. Even so, at 5-foot-7 and about 185 pounds, he had the build. While roughhousing shortly before his death, he broke a small bone in his right hand and wound up in a cast. He was wearing it during the confrontation with Gil.

He also liked to garden. He grew sunflowers in a neighbor’s backyard and in his own.

This year, months after Jeremy’s death, the neighbor who let the boy grow sunflowers in the garden grew a 350-pound pumpkin. On the pumpkin, Rebecca carved Jeremy’s name surrounded by a heart. The pumpkin won a blue ribbon at the OC Fair this summer.

Since Jeremy’s death, nearly a dozen friends have gotten a tattoo of his name.

Still, Rebecca offers this: “I’m not one of these morons who think their kid is perfect.”

She knew he sometimes drank and maybe more. She knows now that he’d been drinking the night of his death.

But she’ll never know his side of the story of how he got stabbed.

The two teens with Jeremy told Garden Grove police “multiple stories” that night, Deputy District Attorney Steve McGreevy said recently. The boys had some earlier run-ins with Gil, McGreevy said, and “wanted revenge on him.”

Gil’s story never changed.

Gil, McGreevy said, was confronted on the driveway of his home. Gil, at some point, saw the BB gun the teens had in the car. His shouts about the gun were captured on a call to 911, McGreevy said.

He was booked on suspicion of murder after that night. He was released later with a request from prosecutors for further investigation.

“It was never a case of, ‘It’s kind of messy and we’re not going to do anything,’” McGreevy said. “It’s whether we can convince 12 people that there was a crime here beyond a reasonable doubt.

“Justice isn’t just for one person, justice is for everyone.”

Gil, through his mother, declined to comment for this story.

• • •

Rebecca heard much of this earlier this year when she met with McGreevy.

She tries not to blame the two teens. “If he had a choice, I think he would defend the boys again,” she says. Jeremy was a “stand-up type of guy.”

Every day at work, she trains criminal traffic staff in the county courthouse. There, in the heart of the justice system, she feels “tired of the injustice,” she said.

“I have a lot of anger right now.”

It doesn’t help when medical bills arrive addressed to Jeremy. It doesn’t help that a person she believes to be Gil taunts her on Facebook.

Recently, some teens got tattoos with Jeremy’s name, and told Rebecca on Facebook. Seeing that, the person wrote this:

“ill get one that says jeremy be a good boy and dont hit people if i was all of you!! good tattoo!!”

Since Jeremy’s death, Rebecca has been hospitalized three times. She says prescriptions for depression and anxiety help her get through the days and nights. “After the DA, it stewed in me. Then I feel guilty for being upset with kids.”

She’s trying to find meaning in what happened; a purpose.

In the neighbor’s backyard where Jeremy grew sunflowers, sometime she feels like he’s still there. Maybe Jeremy is trying to tell her to let go.

But she won’t; can’t. She wants an explanation for what looks to be a 40-minute ambulance ride. She’s talking about starting Jeremy’s Law, to require hospitals to notify the parents of minors in emergency situations. She wrote a eulogy to mark the anniversary of his death earlier this month.

“What am I to do?” she says. “I don’t want kids to lose faith in the system. I don’t want anyone else to get hurt because of this.”

When your child has been killed, isn’t that a crime?

And here she has one final wish. She wishes she didn’t have to ask.

“People say they understand how I feel because they have a kid that age. But they don’t … Their kid is still there.”

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